BK3, the chesboard of audio game innovation
Hi all,
The idea for this topic came about a few months ago when I was talking to a friend, who was annoyed that audio games haven't progressed too much over the past years, apart from a few projects which are not as famous as they probably should be. I told him that if he wanted to try something different, he should play BK3. However I knew he would probably not like it, as he said he was tired of side-scrollers where you just run and jump over things. He wanted something with a more 2D or even 3D landscape. He also didn't seem too keen on the level of strategy and tactical reasoning needed to work your way through areas of the game. I thought that BK3 was the closest modern game to what he was asking for, and even if he didn't like its navigation, he might still have fun playing some of it for a while.
Within a day of playing the game, he had presumably given up because he couldn't figure out the puzzles of stage 1. We were both busy so we couldn�
39;t really work through it at the time. I even lent him my copy of the translation dictionaries, because there was no solution for NVDA, this was at a time when Instant Translate was broken and JGT was not out to my knowledge, and I would not expect him to buy the translations before even establishing an opinion on the game. I wanted him to at least have a translation to work with.
A few days ago we were talking about audio games again, and he had mentioned Super Liam 2, and how he wasn't that impressed by demos which were recently released. Now I haven't been listening to a lot of those demos because I don't want to get myself all excited about a huge project that may never finish. That's happened far too often in this community, sad to say. I pointed out that SL2 is likely going to be based, at least mechanically, from BK3, since Liam does love that game.
My friend then told me that the reason he still does not like BK3 is because it feels like he is
playing a game of Ches. You listen to stuff around you, but you ultimately have to pause the game, look at this huge board because half of the objects in the game don't make distinct sound, and figure out what you're going to do. You can't just go in there knowing what's going on unless you "cheat and use the camera, which pauses the game." He also pointed out that video games do not work that way, so why should audio games.
Now, I do see his point, but as I tried to explain to him, and those of you who've played a considerable amount of BK3 will tell you, how on earth do you expect to convey the game's world with sound alone?
Here's an example:
I press and hold G to scan with the surface camera, and use up and right a few times, and I find out there's a platform 3 squares above my head which I likely can jump onto. But do I even need to make that jump? I hear a switch, but I don't know quite where it is. I press
D for object information. I scan the board and find the switch I need to hit is on the platform, so I need to get up there. I position myself against the edge of the platform, as this is going to be a high, short jump. "juuump!! Yes, I made it! Now I have to hit the switch, oh but wait it's surrounded by timed swinging blades which I know from experience can kill me in one blow. I can hear the blades there, but I don't know quite where they are, since there are a lot of them. Some are around the switch, and a few are on adjacent platforms which now aren't a threat, but still distracting me. There's no room for error. I didn't come through these 11 rooms before this for nothing. Press D. The only blades I need to worry about are the two blades which are two squares to the left and right of the switch. I'm three squares away from the first blade.
I know what I must do. Run two squares to inch up to the first blade, and right after it swings, ru
n for a few squares and pound the switch. then I must listen for the second blade, and run past it the same as I did the first. I made it, without needing to use any items! Which is good, because I know it's going to get hellish from here.
I hear a door which has suddenly appeared after I flicked the switch. it's faint, (high up), and I know I can't reach it from here, but how far above my head is it? I can't tell by sound alone. Press D. The door is 21 squares above my head. try to use my grappling hook. It doesn't work. I use the G camera, and I find the ground above me is un-hookable. Gotta find another way up there. Use G camera some more and scan the area. I can jump up there, walk over that wall, and get down. Maybe on the other side I can find something. I clumsily fumble over the wall and get down. I still can't hook up to the door though. Where is it? Press D, that's right, position 152. I'm at 149. Let's go to 152 and see i
f I can hook up to something. Aha, yes! Now I can grapple up to the door! I open it, and immediately hear loud explosions and squeals of pain from my character . . . oh shit! Smash the D key! I'm ambushed by 10 security jets, all of which are at my experience level. Also I'm already knocked down to about 70 percent health from that one blow. If I'd not been able to pause the game, I'd be dead by now just surveying the area. This . . . is going to be a fight!
Oh wait, there's an item here which I know they can destroy with their missile fire. I can't here it though, it's 100 squares away and I'd never find it through the sound of their intense firing. Item is at position 0, the left wall. If any of their missiles head past me to the left, they're likely going to hit that wall and blow up the item. So I know my first priority is to use a speed drink of some sort to snag that item before they blow it up, or risk losing it. There&#
039;s also a ladder in here which I can climb a few squares to evade the jets, which stay on the ground or fly over my head.
I use a speed drink, and hurriedly rush for the item. I barely manage to get it!
I fight for several minutes by mostly sound, occasionally using the ladder and also object information to make sure I'm not missing any items the jets are dropping as they die, and checking the position of some oncoming jet missiles to find out if they're headed right for me or will sail over my head. Making a wrong move here could mean loads of unnecessary damage. How many jets have I killed? 3? 5? 7? I lost count. Object information tells me two jets left. Nice! One of which is at 54 percent health and the other is at 67. I know my weapon can do about 23 percent damage per hit on these. I know now what I must do. I amusedly kill the remaining jets, basking in the heat and energy of their explosions, and go into next room. Beep beep beep beep . . . booom! What
was that? I'm down to 6 percent health! Heal, damn it! Good thing I stocked up on gold in the previous stages and bought like 80 healing items. Maybe I should've leveled up my defense, but it's too late for that now. There we go, now check object information. I'm being shot at with missiles! Some of which are at my height and some of which are being fired from the platform above my head. So every time a missile comes, I know I must use object information to figure out which platform it is traveling across, as they go too fast for me to try to figure out how high up in the air they might sound. After flipping a few switches, I find my way up to the upper platform, and make it through the door up there, to end the stage.
That's just a brief example of how object information can be useful. Before you ask, that was mostly made up, however there are areas in stage 25 much like that. As tedious as this might sound, the goal of object information is not to sl
ow things down, but to allow one to survey the area and get specific information. Therefore, it is helpful for the fun factor to learn how the system works so you can very quickly get just the information you need as you need it, instead of standing there all day trying to piece everything together.
My friend, and I suspect many others who don't like the game, was insistent that the game needs more audible cues. While having better audible height indicators would be awesome, I fail to see how that would negate the need for using cameras to look around. Games which haven't done that are often criticized for their simplicity or monotony (Psychostrike, The Gate, Super Liam, Q9 sometimes, etc.) They're just not able to have quite that level of rewarding strategy. I'm not saying they're bad games, in fact The Gate does have some very well placed obstacle sequences which will get you killed if you don't see them coming, but that's the kind of
cheap difficulty we see on old Nes games that a lot of new gamers hate. It's not the kind of game where you can survey what's happening and calculate your approach, you have to almost plan every step out in advance and just hope you don't screw it up. If you do, there's no way out other than spamming the system. In BK3, I find you at least have a chance, if you carefully memorize the patterns of yourself and your enemy, and you can often find clever ways to grab a platform and stay just out of reach of the enemy until it's safer to come back down, or bite the bullet and die, and stock up on weapons and things for particularly bad spots. I always say BK3 makes me feel in control, since I can play the game how I want, whether it's destroying everything like a killer and not caring, or calculating my way out. Audio games less complex simply don't allow that, and I think it's the text output that BK3 provides that makes such strategy possible to c
omprehend. Again my intent is not at all to say other less complex games are bad!
So, let's say we did try to get rid of object information or other screens like that in games. How would we do it?
Well, hypothetically if all BK3 did was go beep, beep, beep or something similar to convey the landscape, I think it would make the game easy. If every time it was a matter of, learn that this sound means you're safe and this sound means you're in danger, that would be little more than a game of memory match. It could be fun, but would get old after a while. BK3 can become kind of monotonous, but it at least tries to keep adding depth, and if you take it in bursts, the monotony isn't nearly as bad. With how tight the game mechanics are, I don't think it is possible to make an adequate sound-only system to represent the world. Some of the maneuvers you have to make require surgical precision. That would require changing the sound fairly drastically f
or even one tile's movement, a proposition which I find very unrealistic. It is easy to become fatigued listening for almost unnoticeable changes in sound and would make the game not fun, but tortuously nerve-racking. In a video game I believe this can be done more easily by looking at obstacle placement and seeing how your character moves in relation to everything else on the board. But by sound this is almost impossible for the reasons I mentioned above, as it is just too subtle and technical for most gamers to want to fight with. Research has already shown that more than 8 or so sounds at once leaves the brain very confused. BK3 already has far more than 8 sounds playing at one time, in many parts of the game. No wonder people like to hack and slash their way through it with the most powerful weapons they can get, and or run away like a coward until the enemies are dead, and chesboarding their way out.
I've already pondered the idea of getting rid of tiled movement
, and instead having nearly continuous movement where a small tolerance for error could be implemented to keep things reasonable, perhaps less tolerance in some spots than in others. I have suspicions the Alchemy Montezuma's Revenge demo did this, and that made the game much more fun for me than any later versions. I think that's how most platformer video games are designed, or at least the good ones were, but I have no experience playing them. I just know this wasn't a big issue on them, so they must have gotten something right.
Even if we implemented that type of system in an audio game, we'd still only solve one part of the problem. How do we represent objects which do not make sound normally, like platforms, doors, and drop-offs? In a world where we want more advanced audio games, that is one thing we need to figure out before we can really do that. We also need to figure out how to indicate where those platforms are, or how deep the drops are, etc. A si
ghted person could look at them, but how would you convey all of that aurally, short of having something just tell you? From a technical standpoint, we also need to have more advance sound processing algorithms that could give us true 3D sound. That's another part of why textual output exists now, because the sound engines in most games simply can't provide all the information on their own that a literal transcription could, including the 2D and 3D landscape. Therefore I think some objective text output really does help balance that for now. The implementation of it in BK3 might be a little overpowered, but I think it fits perfectly the limitations of what was possible to convey in the soundscape.
I'm not trying to suggest that things are just fine as they are. I always believe there is room for improvement. But my thought is, until someone can even suggest a way to improve the system and implement it in a way that is user friendly, we should carefully measure ou
r criticism. We've seen this time and time again, of developers being slashed to a pulp because they didn't do something the way we wanted it, or didn't innovate. While some of that I think was justified, the manner in which it was delivered was not, and some of it honestly I feel should've just been left to inner circles. I have yet to see someone attempt a game on the scope of BK3 who does it differently, so I am willing to accept that this is where it's at right now. But that and everything else I've said here is just my opinion, so please take it as such.
As I am attempting to make clear, I am not at all opposed to innovation and improvement, but I am sick and tired of people who go around loud mouthing their disapproval, but are not able to do anything helpful when approached by someone who wants to take them seriously. Gentle suggestion is one thing, and that is what my friend and I are trying to put forward, though he was a little more adama
nt about it than I am, so I am sort of writing this topic on both of our behalfs. We've both thought of the issue I've presented and are still trying to think of something, even a concept, that seems like it could replace what's currently out there. So far we haven't thought of anything.
Any ideas for innovation? Discuss them here, not just with BK3, but anything else relating to audio game complexity and innovation as well!
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